Thank You for Recycling!

Are you there, readers? It’s me, Mrs. Tittle Tattle. We all know that being environmentally conscious has been an ongoing international
trend. But “going green” in Manhattan is usually more about selling your co-op to pocket the cash, or being jealous of someone for publishing a book, losing 20 pounds, raising fabulous children, or all of the above (a triple-threat, which really makes you want to stick
a knife into your Chanel-jacketed heart). That being said, environmental fetishism has recently been on my mind, ever since my son’s school asked parents to save those envelopes with the see-through windows that usually contain bills, so the kids could color them and apply them to windows in the school for a stained-glass effect. Not only did this clever project combine Earth Day dogma with beautiful artwork, but trying to find those windowed envelopes made me go through all my piles of bills and actually pay them, instead of only attending to the fun mail, like invites to parties and trunk shows. This was a valuable lesson: Recycling is not only good for the environment; it improves your life in ways you never dreamed of.

For example, recycling your wardrobe is a fantastic way to save landfills from piles of non-biodegradable clothing. And I don’t mean re-wearing outfits, but turning fashion trash into valuable household items. Try filling the cups of your old padded bras with cloves and stitching them together, then wrap them with festive holiday tissue paper, pull the straps really short, and hang them from your Christmas tree. And what about those old, flowing bohemian skirts, which were nice when you didn’t feel like shaving your legs, but were so long they wound up getting caught in sidewalk dog poop? Cut out the soiled sections, wash the rest, and sew them together to make a cool duvet cover for your teenage daughter’s bed! Don’t forget that when you recycle your wardrobe, you expend less energy shopping for new stuff!

And what about those old party invitations? Tossing them into the paper recycling can is so unimaginative! Put the best ones in frames, and use them as artwork to decorate your entertaining spaces, so that all your guests can see how popular you are. Then go ahead and host the next class cocktail party! That awful mother from your child’s class who thinks she’s the new Brooke Astor will be positively apoplectic as she stares at your wall-to-wall invitations to very important parties. “I had no idea that Mrs. Tittle-Tattle was so A-list!” she’ll exclaim. “I can’t believe she got invited to a ‘commitment’ ceremony between Lulu Landis’s Labrador and Patsy Pinkerton’s poodle! And who even knew the dogs were gay?”

Here’s another idea for “renewable energy sources”: Instead of placing your used Cabernet and Merlot bottles into the glass bin, line them up, let your daughter blow on them to make a wind instrument, record her performing concerts on it (which will surely go viral on YouTube), and ask someone to write a review saying she’s the Itzhak Perlman of wine bottle blowing. She’ll be getting into a selective college before you can say “diversity” (which is not going to be a big selling point for most of us, hence the need for unusual talents). If that doesn’t work out, you can try getting your son and his friends to form a theatrical troupe dedicated to performing the bottle dance from Fiddler on the Roof, and have them tour all over the country, which could be that ace in the hole for college admissions. Unless he applies to a yeshiva, in which case they’ll be more apt to say, “Feh! We have 1,200 applicants who like to bottle dance. We need some guys who can play lacrosse!”

But recycling people is really the wave of the future. Your discarded, evil exlover could be another woman’s dream come true, especially if she is really desperate or bipolar. And you can even recycle exes for your own future use, much the same way you’d reuse a water bottle rather than buy a new one. My friend Jeannie does this all the time, especially when she needs a date and can’t think of anyone else to invite. Instead of double dipping into the earth’s diminishing pool of straight, non-psycho single men, she’ll re-date an old boyfriend, and revel in the knowledge that she’s doing something good for the planet (the gals who live on it anyway). Same with spouses—I mean Liz Taylor recycled Richard Burton, right? And why stop there? You can take credit for recycling your kids when you deliver them to a step parent, who gets a “used” child to play with. This could possibly deter a stepmother from overpopulating the earth by having her own kids with your ex, since she’ll see how freaky the first set of children turned out.

Finding new ways to use old things is a great way to help the environment, and help yourself, too. Despite what a well-know frog puppet once said, it’s actually easy being “green,” and, more importantly, it’s fun! [HS]